The present disclosure relates in general to vehicle simulators, especially flight simulators.
Testing may be performed for a particular aircraft. For example, sunlight testing may be performed in an engineering environment, such as with a Boeing Commercial Aircraft (BCA) engineering simulator that uses real airplane cockpit structures along with real avionics for development and testing purposes. In some situations, a training simulator may be used if the avionics systems are real airplane hardware. Thus, different testing and evaluations, such as testing or evaluation of the flight deck controls, may be performed.
Some simulators, including engineering simulators for aircraft, are equipped with systems for simulating ambient solar lighting that allows for evaluations of flight deck surfaces, windows, controls and displays under different lighting conditions expected during service (e.g., while in flight). The evaluations allow pilots and engineers to identify potential certification and customer acceptance concerns before formal engineering flight testing for pilot optical performance.
The most difficult condition to simulate is a bright forward field of view that simulates the sun above the forward horizon and above a cloud deck. Some conventional systems use a large array of high pressure discharge lamps aligned to a cockpit sized reflector to generate the appropriate bright forward field of view condition. High pressure discharge lamps produce a significant amount of ultraviolet and infrared radiation. The lamp array requires significant power and produces a significant amount of heat. Moreover, the mechanical structures and reflector that are used are installed temporarily for lighting tests and often require many hours for each lighting test setup and tear down.
Thus, in conventional simulator visual systems, such as wide field of view simulator visual systems, providing a bright forward field of view simulation can be costly in both setup and tear down that requires extensive time and effort, while also requiring significant power for operation.